The www is a bit artsy for my tastes as well, at least in a programming sense, but making a ligature of www isn't a terrible thing, IMO. It already almost creates its own ligature, especially when used with a serif font.

Heck, a lot of people I know will make a verbal ligature of www - something like 'dub dub dub'.

www was unnerving to me (and a couple of my team members) too.

In a way I am interested in psychological basis for my innate rejection of this. Conceptually, I comprehend why it is made into it's own ligature, like !=, it is a unit of information these days.

Well, for starters it's an abbreviation, whereas -> or != is an approximation of a symbol, so that makes it different from the rest. Also, you're on a website that has no www in any part of its website, so it's not nearly as ubiquitous.

If anything I think it makes more sense to have :// as a ligature.